In a moving demonstration of the resilience and resourcefulness of the people of Nepal, the Boudhanath Stupa in Kathmandu was formally reopened to the public on Tuesday, some 18 months after the country was devastated by a massive earthquake and a series of deadly aftershocks that killed nearly 9,000 people and displaced millions with the destruction of homes and businesses—damage that extended to hundreds of historic monasteries, temples, and monuments.

Institutional corruption has been a hot topic in the news of late. The seismic election of brash political outsider and controversial tycoon Donald Trump as the next president of the United States was due in large part to public revulsion at the perceived corruption within all echelons of the US political establishment. Both of the main parties have been castigated for losing touch with the American people and for looking out only for their own interests and those of their corporate lobbyists. Trump has been perhaps most divisive US presidential candidate in history, but even though his candidacy espoused many alarming, misguided, and dangerous values, to many voters he also represented the possibility of radical change that would shake up the brittle and complacent state of American politics.

When a dolphin mother carries the body of her dead offspring for days, is she in mourning? When elephants hold a vigil over a deceased family member, are they also grieving? We’re all familiar with the pain and anguish of losing a loved one, but do animals share the same experience? Science has long frowned on anthropomorphizing animals, attributing human feelings and emotions to account for their behavior, however a growing body of evidence suggests that many animals do share the capacity to feel grief and sorrow, mourning the loss of loved ones as keenly as humans.

On 27 October, about 240 Buddhist monks and scholars from 30 countries gathered for the First Cultural Forum of the Heart Sutra in Nanjing, the historic capital of Jiangsu Province in eastern China. The famous Heart Sutra contains around 260 characters and is considered a pithy and profound summary of the key doctrines of Mahayana Buddhism. The participants shared their perspectives on the sutra and its potential for informing cultural exchange.

More than 150 years after it was removed from Bhutanese possession by British colonial forces, a statue of the revered 16th century Tibetan lama Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyal Rinpoche, who is credited with having established Bhutan as a nation-state, is set to return to its native Bhutan, at least temporarily.

The renowned and revered Nyingma teacher Venerable Domang Yangthang Rinpoche has passed away in Hyderabad, southern India, at the age of 87.

A very special Buddhist conference is taking place this week in the central Indian city of Nagpur in celebration of the Indian scholar, social activist, and reformer Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–56), who helped convert some 500,000 people to Buddhism in a single day.

We do not like to think that humans are inherently cruel or violent. Even the suggestion that homo sapiens might, as a species, be inclined to violence sits uneasily with all but the most cynical misanthrope. Yet this is what a Spanish team of researchers from the Estación Experimental de Zonas Áridas (EEZA) has suggested. According to the study published in the scientific journal Nature, the team discovered that 2 per cent of our primeval ancestors’ deaths were down to violent means, indicating that at some point in the distant past, humans became accomplished at killing each other for a multitude of reasons. Lethal violence, the researchers say, might be a fundamental part of humanity’s evolutionary history.

His Holiness Ogyen Trinley Dorje, the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa last week received 20 postgraduate psychology students in Dharamsala, northern India, who will attend a special program of meetings with His Holiness over 11 days. During the course of the program, the students and the Karmapa will discuss and examine how Buddhism and modern psychology approach and understand the various human emotions.

With a higher compressive strength than brick, concrete, or wood, and a tensile strength that rivals steel, bamboo’s utility as a lightweight building material has been known for thousands of years. Now, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, hope to cement the role of this versatile grass species as a sustainable and environmentally friendly building product for the future for emerging economies around the world.